Now up & running is a review of Anchor Bay’s shiny Blu-ray edition of The Walking Dead[M], AMC’s rather daring series which premiered in 2010, and returns in the fall of 2011 – meaning those hooked on the series won’t be sated with more tales of emotional trauma from a world overrun by zombies for MONTHS.

Damn!

I still think series creator Frank Darabont benefitted from the allowances ABC made towards the makers of Lost, whereby stories often focused on the offside, private moments of characters rather than the next big pre-ad break shock; and the upped gore level in Dead Set(2008), the brutally violent U.K. series that made it okay for filmmakers (and satirists) to indulge in slimy viscera and serious bodily trauma on TV. Darabont gave free license to effects meisters KNB, and the results are pick-axes to the head, gunshots inflicted upon various facets of the head, and a lovely moment involving the smearing of rotting internal organ matter on clothes.

Bear McCreary’s sparse score isn’t yet available on CD, but in our interview [M] last year, he reflected on working with Darabont, and some of the scoring ideas for the series.

Coming next: thoughts on the recent screening at the Tiff Bell Lightbox (TBL!) of Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and a review of the 1988 TV remake. What? Didn’t know there was one? I’m sure stars Patrick Duffy and Loni Anderson also forgot. Or tried to, after firing their agents.

In 1935, Michael Powell directed 7 films, and The Phantom Light (1935) is among the few of his early quota work to make it to DVD. For North Americans familiar with his more daring artistic experiments with Emeric Pressburger (such as The Red Shoes, or Black Narcissus)…

Based on the still-unsolved Flannan Isle Mystery in which three lighthouse keepers vanished from an isolated isle without a trace in 1900, Joe Bone and Celyn Jones’ script unravels like a classic thriller in which isolation + greed drives men mad…

Whether Pearl S. Buck’s first screenplay required heavy work by Claude Binyon isn’t known, but the author of The Good Earth (published in 1931, and made into a film in 1937 by MGM) reportedly wrote China Story around 1950…

A whydunnit transposed to a WWII military courtroom in India, this adaptation of Howard Fast’s novel deals with a U.S. lieutenant facing the death penalty after shooting a British colleague in cold blood…

Written during his busiest period (1968-1970), Quincy Jones’ score for John and Mary was quite sparse, leaving obligatory space for the film’s myriad dialogue exchanges and source music, but the score is memorable for being atypical of the material Jones was writing at the time: action comedies (The Italian Job, The Hell with Heroes), comedies (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,Cactus Flower), and the funky style of They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!

For some soundtrack fans, it was a bit of surprise to learn the composer of pioneering synth scores had begun his career with large orchestral scores for John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal (1982)…

The first film in the enduring franchise gave John Powell the perfect opportunity to write what remains both his definitive action sound, and the definitive action score of that decade, blending large orchestral sounds with layers upon layers of electronics…

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